AWStats is an open-source Log analyzer than can be easily configured to work with IIS logs.

My AWStats configuration for IIS7 is based on a great instruction written by Simon Schofield Installing AWStats on IIS 6.0 (Including IIS 5.1) – Revision 3.0.

But “out of the box” AWStats doesn’t provide any statistics for the time-taken IIS logfile field. It also can’t be configured, using the provided Extra Section feature.

But it can be “easily” added, by updating the core awstat.pl configuration file.

Find below my updated instruction how-to install AWStats on IIS 7.0 and include in the Extra Section the Time-taken statistics, which displays the average of time-taken to display a specific ASPX page:

INSTRUCTION for AWStats 6.95 (build 1.943) :
Installing AWStats on IIS 7.0 and IIS 6.0 including time-taken statistics
DOWNLOAD awstats.pl:
Updated awstats.pl configuration file, that include the IIS time-taken statistics.

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A very short description:

First in the LogFormat string a new extra parameter was specified:
LogFormat="%time2 %method %url %other %logname %host %other %ua %query %virtualname %code %bytesd %extra1"

In the awstats.pl file the lines of code responsible for counting the page hits, were replaced by computing the average of time-taken to open a webpage – new variable was introduced for that. Additionally the web-report(general and detailed) column title was changed to “Avg Time Taken[ms]“:

An example of the AWStats time-taken statistics for IIS 7.0:

Related posts

1. Web Deployment Project – Visual Studio 2008 Add-in
2. Hosting ASP.Net application on a shared server
3. Ajax Control Toolkit – PageRequestManagerTimeOutException

Visual Studio Web Deployment Projects, provide additional functionality to build and deploy Web sites and Web applications in Visual Studio 2008. This Add-In can be downloaded from Microsoft website: Web Deployment Projects.

The Visual Studio built-in “Copy Website” and “Publish Website” options are lacking of flexibility. Web Deployment Projects provides additional functionality for example:
- merging assemblies (from context menu)
- the ability to create pluggable configuration files (from context menu)
- exclude files and folders (*.wdproj file in deployment project)

When merging assemblies you can specify to get only 1 result DLL, instead of multiple when using “Publish web site”.
Second thing is, that you can define a strong name of result DLL file which means, that it will be easier to updates the web site on the webserver – just replacing the DLL, instead of deleting all assemblies with *.compiled XMLs and copying new ones (can be hundreds). So you don’t have to carry about the “strange” assemblies file names (with the hash code varying) like: App_Web_0375kxso.dll, etc.

Ability to create pluggable configuration files allows you to specify independent files, that store the contents of a particular configuration section independently, based on solution configurations. That means for example, that the Web.config section will include different database connectionString for Debug and Release, or any other user specified solution configuration.

You can also exclude files and folders that shouldn’t be part of the release, e.g: reports, uploaded files, etc.

Finally the *.wdproj configuration file has a MSBuild syntax, so you can specify there whatever you want. Out of the box there are 4 build process sections: BeforeBuild, BeforeMerge, AfterMerge, AfterBuild, where you can specify your tasks.

The detailed description of the Web Deployment Projects can be found HERE.
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Find below some of my *.wdproj configuration examples:

Exclude directory:
<ItemGroup>
<ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\**\_svn\**" />
<ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\**\.svn\**" />
</ItemGroup>


Exclude directory except specified file:
<ItemGroup>
<ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\ChartImages\**\*.*" Exclude="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\ChartImages\**\place.holder" />
</ItemGroup>


Minimize (shrink) JavaScript files using Microsoft Ajax Minifier (based on Łukasz Gąsior blog):
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\MicrosoftAjax\AjaxMin.tasks" />
<Target Name="AfterBuild">
<ItemGroup>
<!-- Create the list of JS files to minimize. Exclude *.min.js files, e.g. jquery-xxx.min.js -->
<JsFilesDevelopment Include="$(OutputPath)\**\*.js" Exclude="$(OutputPath)\**\*.min.js" />
</ItemGroup>
<!-- Minimize the JavaScript using AjaxMin -->
<AjaxMin SourceFiles="@(JsFilesDevelopment)" SourceExtensionPattern="\.js$" TargetExtension=".js" LocalRenaming="CrunchAll" />
</Target>


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How to avoid “PageRequestManagerTimeOutException” while using Ajax Control Toolkit?

I was having a problem when developing an ASP.NET Web Application using Ajax Control Toolikit.
On one of my Report pages, the constructed SQL query using LINQKit was pretty complex. It took a while for the SQL Server to return the results.
The complexity depends on the amount of specified filter parameters by the user. There are also calculations and transformations performed on the SQL results, which of course affect the request execution time.
This caused, that sometimes on my report page, when sending the Ajax request, the users browser noted a JavaScript error, instead of displaying the report.

First thought was to increase the Ajax PostBack Timeout. I can be set in the code behind – by default it’s set to 90 seconds:
…
ScriptManager.AsyncPostBackTimeout = 120; //in seconds
…
But what if there are more users requesting a report at the same time? At least I need to inform them, why they didn’t get what they were expecting.

There is a possibility in the Ajax Control Toolkit, to attach user JavaScript code when the request ends.
So if I attach my code that displays an alert message and/or redirects to an error page, that would be great! I could better handle this timeout.

So in the Master Page, after the ScriptManager control, I’ve added new JavaScript code:

Some explanation of this code sample:
- get the current Script Manager instance
- attach custom endRequest event function
- check if the request ends with an error of the type:
  Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManagerTimeoutException
- if the above^ condition is true, notice the Script Manager that this
  error was handled (prevent from JavaScript errors in users browser)
- finally redirect to custom error page (display error message, send error
  emails, etc.)

Additionally the reqManager._postBackSettings.panelID provides me extra informs about the update panel that started the request, because there are more of them on one page.

So this “simple” JavaScript code performs a timeout error check for all Ajax request in my Web Application.

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Parallel computing is a form of computation in which many operations are carried out simultaneously. In the “age of  many-core”, developers are getting more and more interesting in using easily all the “power” of the CPU.

Visual Studio 2010, the .NET Framework 4, and Visual C++ 2010 all contain new support for writing, debugging, and tuning parallel applications.

Learn more about Parallel computing on Microsoft MSDN Site.

See also a presentation about Manycore and the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.

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Only a few days ago ASP MVC wpreview was released. I have tried to run a small application with this preview version and compare to stable 1.0 version. As published on MS page the aim of MVC 2 is to “Improve productivity and deliver enterprise ready product”.

What’s new in 2.0… Template helpers, areas, support for data annotations and a range of strongly-typed improvements.

I must plead that I expected something more from changing from 1.0 to 2.0. In version naming it seams to be a huge leap -100%?? ;) Taking into account the first aim of the release – productivity – I am a little disappointed. The feature that is still missing comparing to mature MVC libraries in other languages is lack of stable tag library that speeds up writing views. We still need to mix HTML and code and in case of complex forms the readability of aspx page suffers a lot. I believe that writing applications with MVC pattern will improve greatly when finally, even a basic, tag library is released. Of course, there are small features that improves effectiveness like introduced field types but it won’t solve all problems with V(iew) layer.

To sum up MVC just after writing simple ‘Hello world’ with a small form. I reckon that MVC will become more and more popular and when it becomes a fact we will get our beloved tag library. For now – use 1.0.

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Everyday battle has just started :)

Morning problem:

<asp:LoginView runat="server">
  </AnonymousTemplate>
  --something--
  </AnonymousTemplate>
  <LoggedInTemplate>
    <asp:TextBox ID="magicTextBox" runat="server" />
  </LoggedInTemplate>
</asp:LoginView>

Does anyone know how to access control named magicTextBox from code behind? Of course referencing it by name or using FindControl method was unsuccessful. I have just used temporal solution with JavaScript. When I find something valuable I will let you know.

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